(Note: The scatterplot was originally created by FlowingData, where the relationship is correctly
described as "downward slopey"; the caption above is from the Inverse Culture article.)

Facebook advertises that it "can reach 41 million 18 to 24-year-olds in the United States and 60 million 25- to 34-year-olds." But according to the U.S. Census, there are only 31 million and 45 million total people in those two demographic groups. Details are in this new York Times article.

Lecture on football probability

It features John Urschel, an offensive for the NFL's Baltimore Ravens, who is also studying applied mathematics at MIT. The video begins with John at a chalkboard using a decision tree to analyze a one-point vs. two-point conversion late in a football game.

John is already a published mathematician, as described in this 2016 article from the Notices of the AMS.

Redefining statistical significance

University Chicago economist John List is one of 72 collaborators whose commentary,
Redfine statistical significance, was just published in Nature Human Behavior. The subtitle reads,
"We propose to change the default P-value threshold for statistical significance from 0.05 to 0.005 for claims of
new discoveries."

How bad/good were the predictions about Hurricane Irma

How surprising is it that Irma is heading up the "wrong" coast of Florida? Well, it changed the plans of one expert.

Brian McNoldy, a researcher at the University of Miama and respected blogger on tropical storms and hurricanes, decided on Thursday to evacuate from South Florida with friends and his two dogs and drive to the Tampa area.

Dr. McNoldy ended up travelling back to Miami once the forecast changed, showing Irma smashing into the west coast of Florida rather than hitting Miami dead on.

Was this a failure of the statistical model? Florida is such a skinny state that Dr. McNoldy admits that predicting where any hurricane will hit is problematic.

"A hundred miles is the difference between the east coast and the west coast-but a hundred miles in a three-day forecast is really good."

More accurate forecasts are unlikely to come anytime soon. The problem is that people don't understand the depiction of uncertainty in the graphic models. The focus is on the line that runs down the middle and they ignore the variation about that line, the cone of probability.

J. Marchall Shepherd, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Georgia exlained the fallacy in a Facebook post. "Anywhere in that cone is a possibility," Dr. Shepherd wrote, "and it has always been a challenge communicating what the cone 'means' versus what people 'think" it means."

2. Dr. Shepherd mentions in a Facebook post referenced b yhe New York Times article that people often confuse the concept of "percent probability of rain." What are some of the potential misinterpretations of this phrase?

3. Hurricane Harvey reintroduced us to the term "500 year flood." What are some of the potential misinterpretations of this phrase.

Teachers tell us these data visualizations are rich texts for classrooms across the curriculum, not just in the math or statistics class. Whether in a literature class analyzing Jane Austen’s language, a science class considering climate data, or a civics class studying gerrymandering, teaching students how to read, interpret and question graphs, maps and charts is a key 21st-century skill.

Monty Hall has died

Statisticians know Monty's name from a notorious conditional probability problem. As described in the article:

“Let’s Make a Deal” became such a pop-culture phenomenon that it gave birth to a well-known brain-twister in probability, called “the Monty Hall Problem". This thought experiment involves three doors, two goats and a coveted prize and leads to a counterintuitive solution.

The problem is a close relative of Bertrand's box paradox, which dates from the 19th century, but it exploded into public awareness as the Game Show Problem in a series of columns from the 'Ask Marilyn' feature in Parade Magazine in 1990-1991.

A New Yorkercartoon inspired by the show was described by Laurie Snell in the inaugural installment of the Chance Newsletter in September 1992!